This is a surprise if you have fallen in with the recent spasm of Afro-optimism. This December, The Economist published its 'Hopeful Continent' issue about Africa, praising GDP growth forecasts and highlighting examples of innovation and legitimately-won wealth. Meanwhile, the African Development Bank (AfDB) tells us that the continent now boasts 310 million middle class people, a tripling over the last 30 years.

But wait — according to the AfDB you're "middle class" if you earn more than $2 a day. This can't pass for a definition of middle class anywhere except in the AfDB's ivory towers. To be fair, the researchers add a note about the stratospheric inequality in Africa acknowledging that, "about 100,000 Africans had a net worth of $800 billion," equivalent to 80 percent of sub-Saharan Africa's entire GDP.

This is the real story of economic growth in Africa: inequality. The Nigerian statistics highlight this, and they come as no surprise at all if you've taken the short walk from a filthy slum, across a potholed road jammed with shiny SUVs, into a fortified neighborhood of villas and high-rise apartments; an experience all too many Africans have on a daily basis. The proximity of the destitute to the appallingly rich creates jealousy and stokes anger.

Amid all the talk of macro-growth, of GDP projections (more than 5 percent says the IMF), and rising per capita income, what is lost is the self-evident truth that a nation's wealth is not distributed equally, per capita. Far from it.

Meanwhile, millions of Kenyans — some of whom have voted for him — carve their homes out of the ever-expanding slums that encircle the capital like a squalid necklace.

The "trickle down effect" of rising GDP is just that — a trickle – for most the drudgery of earning enough for food, school fees and housing is unchanging. The narrative of 'Africa Rising,' of world-leading economic growth and an expanding 'middle class,' does not ring true.